Chemically sweet – the sweet journey (part 4 of 6)

We are halfway on our jour­ney into the world of sweet­en­ing. Along the way, we have looked at alter­na­tive sug­ars, sug­ar alco­hols and oth­er bulk sweet­en­ers. So far, we have not found any good alter­na­tive to sug­ar. It is time to realise that the solu­tion is not found in sweet­en­ers with about the same sweet­ness and vol­ume as sug­ar. We must change the direc­tion of our jour­ney and enter the ter­ri­to­ry of the high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers. The first stop will be with the arti­fi­cial ones.

High-intensity sweeteners

Sugars, sug­ar alco­hols and high­ly processed bulk sweet­en­ers are nutri­tive sweet­en­ers. The fact that they pro­vide ener­gy is the source of the prob­lems we have with them.

Actually, the ener­gy itself isn’t a prob­lem. The crux is that nutri­tive sweet­en­ers con­tain too much ener­gy in rela­tion to their sweetness.

What we need are sweet­en­ers that con­tribute no or neg­li­gi­ble ener­gy rel­a­tive to the desired sweet­ness. Such sweet­en­ers are called a non-nutri­tive sweet­en­er.

Non-nutri­tive sweet­en­ers are also called high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers (HIS) as their sweet­ness is per­ceived as much more intense than the sweet­ness of the same amount of reg­u­lar sugar.

Artificial sweeteners

The most well-known and researched group of high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers are syn­thet­i­cal­ly pro­duced, called arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers. They are entire­ly human-made, and have no coun­ter­part in nature, and yet they are quite (in)famous to most consumers.

Acesulfame K (E 950), also called ace­sul­fame potas­si­um or Ace K, is 130–200 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced from ace­toac­etate and potas­si­um. Acesulfame K also works as a flavour enhancer and is used, among oth­er things, to enhance the sweet­ness in aspar­tame, cycla­mate and sucralose.

Aspartame (E 951) is about 200 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced from the nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring amino acids, aspar­tic acid, and pheny­lala­nine. Foods that con­tain aspar­tame must state that it ‘con­tains a source of phenylalanine’.

Cyclamates (E 952) is the col­lec­tive name for cal­ci­um cycla­mate, potas­si­um cycla­mate and sodi­um cycla­mate, which are about 30 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. These are salts pro­duced from cyclam­ic acid, which in turn is pro­duced through a reac­tion between cyclo­hexy­lamine and chloro­sul­phon­ic acid.

Saccharine (E 954) is the col­lec­tive name for sodi­um sac­cha­r­i­nate and potas­si­um sac­cha­r­i­nate, which is about 400 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It’s sodi­um- or potas­si­um salts from o-ben­zoic sul­fimide. Saccharine has a metal­lic and bit­ter after­taste, which is often masked by oth­er sweeteners.

Sucralose (E 955), also called trichloro­galac­to­su­crose, is 500–600 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced from reg­u­lar sug­ar by exchang­ing three oxy­gen-hydro­gen pairs for chlo­rine atoms.

Neohesperidine DC (E 959), also called neo­hes­peri­dine dihy­drochal­cone, often abbre­vi­at­ed to NHDC, is 3,000 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced chem­i­cal­ly from the bit­ter sub­stance neo­hes­peri­dine present in cit­rus fruits. It’s rarely used as the only sweet­en­er; its sweet­ness only comes through after a few sec­onds and gives an after­taste of men­thol and liquorice.

Neotame (E 961) is 7,000–13,000 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced syn­thet­i­cal­ly through a chem­i­cal reac­tion between aspar­tame and oth­er chem­i­cal substances.

Aspartame-ace­sul­fame salt (E 962) is about 350 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is a salt con­sist­ing of ace­sul­fame K (E 950) and aspar­tame (E 951) with the potas­si­um removed. In the body, it is bro­ken down into ace­sul­fame K and aspar­tame. Foods that con­tain aspar­tame-ace­sul­fame salt must state that it ‘con­tains a source of phenylalanine’.

Advantame (E 696) is about 20,000 times sweet­er than reg­u­lar sug­ar. It is pro­duced syn­thet­i­cal­ly from iso­vanillin and aspar­tame (E 951).

Not that great

The arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers we have come across above are eval­u­at­ed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to be safe enough to be used in food and bev­er­ages. But there are ques­tions raised here and there:

• Cyclamates were banned in the US in 1969 as they were sus­pect­ed of hav­ing can­cero­genic effects.
• Saccharine is banned in sev­er­al coun­tries as it is sus­pect­ed to be poisonous.
• Sucralose is an organochlo­rine com­pound which main­ly pass­es through the body, through waste­water treat­ment plants into nature where it degrades very slowly.
• Aspartame is bro­ken down in the body to, among oth­ers, pheny­lala­nine, which in turn breaks down to tyro­sine in most peo­ple. But in peo­ple born with the con­gen­i­tal dis­ease phenylke­tonuria, pheny­lala­nine is not bro­ken down but remains in the blood, increas­ing to lev­els that cause brain damage.
• Aspartame-ace­sul­fame salt con­tains aspar­tame and is there­fore also a source of phenylalanine.

In addi­tion to these issues, there are many alarm reports and state­ments, often lack­ing in evi­dence, nev­er­the­less cir­cu­lat­ing in the gen­er­al con­scious­ness, that are picked up from time to time by news­pa­pers and pop­u­lar mag­a­zines and pre­sent­ed with flam­ing headlines.

These issues, togeth­er with a gen­er­al aver­sion to eat­ing chem­i­cal­ly pro­duced sub­stances, make arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers a bad choice for food and bev­er­age com­pa­nies who want to be seen as envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious and car­ing about their con­sumers’ health.

So, what options are left…?

In the next chap­ter, our jour­ney into the world of sweet­en­ing con­tin­ues fur­ther into the ter­ri­to­ry of the high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers. We will cov­er sweet­en­ers with their roots in nature.